Attorneys Threaten to Sue County : Labor: Prosecutors and public defenders are upset by plans to discontinue payroll deduction of dues. One says move threatens their union’s survival.

Six months after forming a union, local prosecutors and public defenders are considering filing a lawsuit against Ventura County, saying personnel officials are trying to break their ranks.

The county in January began deducting dues from the paychecks of about 110 lawyers who are members of the Criminal Justice Attorneys Assn.

But as of April 9, the county plans to discontinue the procedure, as the two sides work to hash out a bargaining agreement.

Kevin DeNoce, vice president of the Deputy District Attorneys Assn., described the move as a union-busting tactic, a charge strongly denied by a top county personnel official.

DeNoce, a senior deputy district attorney, said county officials are trying to cripple the lawyers’ group by severing its main stream of funding.

In a one-year period, the lawyers would take in about $20,000 from the deductions, DeNoce said. And without those funds, he said, the union would not survive.

DeNoce said his organization plans to file a lawsuit alleging breach of contract if the county stops deducting dues from members’ paychecks.

“We will go to litigation over this,” he said. “This is something you would expect to see happening to coal miners in the 1930s, not to prosecutors in the 1990s.”

A spokeswoman for the county personnel office said the two sides do not have a written agreement requiring the county to deduct the dues, although DeNoce said there is an enforceable oral contract.

“To my knowledge, there is no contract,” said Barbara Journet, the county’s chief negotiator in the bargaining sessions with the lawyers.

Journet said other unions representing county employees have negotiated to have a dues checkoff. She said the lawyers will also have to negotiate for that particular item.

Journet declined to discuss why the county waited until after the beginning of negotiations March 6 to announce that payroll deductions would no longer be made.

Based on the timing of that decision, DeNoce believes that the county was motivated to harm the lawyers organizational efforts.

“To me,” he said, “the only motive I can see is union busting.”

Both the Deputy District Attorneys Assn. and the Public Defenders Assn.--the two groups that combined forces to create the union--paid $950 to the county auditor-controller for the dues-deduction service.

DeNoce maintained that an enforceable contract was entered into at the time the county accepted the payments.

Ventura County deputy prosecutors and public defenders have maintained their separate associations for social and professional purposes, but joined in October to form a union to negotiate on pay and labor issues. Members say they need the union to bring their pay into line with other government attorneys across the state.

The decision came after county officials said 30 attorneys were mistakenly given pay raises in July and ordered the lawyers to return the money.

The lawyers have contended that their pay and benefits have steadily decreased since they left the largest county employees union six years ago.

Local prosecutors, once the fourth highest-paid deputy district attorneys in the state, are now paid 15% to 20% less than their counterparts in comparable counties, the lawyers have said.

The Criminal Justice Attorneys Assn. is made up of 70 prosecutors and 40 public defenders. Douglas W. Daily, head of the public defenders association, could not be reached Tuesday.

In a letter to county officials, the lawyer representing the union also promised a lawsuit if the county discontinued the dues deduction.

“It takes a lot of gall for the leaders of the county to ask underpaid employees who have not received a cost-of-living increase for the past four years to continue to be patient, on the one hand, and to dishonor” an agreement to deduct the dues, attorney Stephen H. Silver said in the letter.